The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported a “privacy incident” Wednesday that impacts 246,157 current and former DHS employees, as well as individuals connected to DHS Inspector General (IG) investigations from 2002 through 2014.
“On May 10, 2017, as part of an ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by DHS OIG and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, DHS OIG discovered an unauthorized copy of its investigative case management system in the possession of a former DHS OIG employee,” DHS Chief Privacy Officer Phillip Kaplan wrote in a statement released Wednesday.
The employee data included “names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, positions, grades, and duty stations,” according to DHS.
For personal information included in investigative data, the DHS release said the data involved would vary depending on data collected from various witnesses and investigation participants. “Information contained in this database could include names, Social Security numbers, alien registration numbers, dates of birth, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and personal information provided in interview with DHS OIG investigative agents,” the DHS release said.
DHS also reported that the data incident was not the result of an external cyber-attack, and individuals’ personal information wasn’t the primary target of the unauthorized data removal.
The department notified potentially impacted employees Dec. 18, and all impacted were offered a year and a half of credit monitoring and identity protection services.
“From May through November 2017, DHS conducted a thorough privacy investigation, extensive forensic analysis of the compromised data, an in-depth assessment of the risk to affected individuals, and comprehensive technical evaluations of the data elements exposed,” the DHS statement read. “These steps required close collaboration with law enforcement investigating bodies to ensure the investigation was not compromised.”
For additional information and resources for those impacted, continue reading here.
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